Every now and then, I come across a blog post or an article about Strong Female Characters. (Sometimes several come along at once.) Often with the capital letters, usually decrying a simplistic reading of strength. True strength, these articles argue, goes beyond mere skill at arms and a sharp tongue. True strength encompasses so much more than shallow kickassery and badass posturing.
Well, you know, I’m not likely to argue with that case. Strength, and courage, and virtue—notwithstanding its very manly Latin etymology—encompass more than surface-level traits. But I do find it interesting how this argument is almost always applied to female characters. How many posts and articles decry the shallow sorts of strength of the thriller hero—seldom sketched in more than two dimensions—a strength that can generally only be demonstrated by his competence with violence, his willingness to defy authority, and his occasional ability to make entertaining banter? More often you find them praised, or taken as the model for a whole subgenre, at least in terms of style. (Here I make sweeping generalisations, but no more sweeping than have been made in the other direction.)
But show me a female character whose major characteristics are competence with violence, willingness to defy authority, and the occasional ability to make entertaining banter, and I’ll show you a character who—I am willing to guarantee you—has been dismissed as entirely lacking depth, or as a “man with breasts,” or criticised for being insufficiently well-rounded, or not really “strong.” (Look at the critiques sometimes leveled at, for example, Ilona Andrews’ Kate Daniels. Or any number of other urban fantasy female protagonists—it’s often urban fantasy that bears the brunt of this critique, since it’s the genre with the greatest preponderance of ass-kicking female characters.)
It puts me in mind of that old adage, that a woman needs to be twice as good to go half as far as her male counterparts.
I’m not arguing in favour of greater shallowness, lest anyone be tempted to misunderstand me. But the double standard of content, the double standard of criticism applied, bothers me really quite fundamentally. We fall into the error of really rather relentlessly applying criticism to female characters. They’re too domestic! They aren’t domestic enough! They have too little agency! Or too much, having unbelievably few constraints on their choices! They’re too violent, too shallow, too brittle. They’re too gentle, too generous, too forgiving, too soft. They’re insufficiently maternal, or too much so. They’re too independent! They’re not independent enough!
They are, in short, very seldom considered good enough to escape this kind of scrutiny.
(Which is unsurprising: If you haven’t noticed, nonfictional women are equally subject to a more intense scrutiny than men. And it’s not just men who subject them to it: It’s something many of us have internalised and reproduce. It’s the air we breathe and the society we swim in.)
This continuous critique of female roles in narrative, though—not just their lack, but every aspect of their presence, both in specific and in aggregate—points to a rather more basic issue. Women just aren’t seen as normal the way men are. And female protagonists, female heroes, are even more a thing to be remarked upon. Male characters escape this sustained critique, because male characters are still the default, the standard. Male heroes are ubiquitous. And they offer no potential transgression of our existing social hierarchies.
So how should we address this double standard?
There are a couple of ways which have been pointed out to me, and which I think are worth considering. It’s vital that in our discussions of Strong Female Characters, we remember the double standard exists. It’s not fair to hold female characters to such a high level of scrutiny. (Part of this, of course, is a scarcity problem: When there are only one or two significant female characters in a narrative, or when they are less than completely ubiquitous in a genre, their representations carry more weight and attract more criticism, because they have to stand for every woman.) We need not only to discuss female characters in light of the double standard of content, but also in light of the double standard of criticism.
We could also spend some more critical energy on interrogating Strong (and Weak) Male Characters. Subject them to higher levels of scrutiny. Ask ourselves what we really mean by “well-rounded” and “believable.”
But mostly, I think, we need to destroy the idea that there is a default sort of human and a default sort of protagonist. That we should judge strength differently based on who has it. (Maybe even that some things are peculiarly male or female at all.)
Look, don’t get me wrong. By all means, let’s debate the meaning of strength. Let’s argue against shallowness, and in favour of depth. But let’s try not to uphold the double standard while we’re doing it?
I know it’s hard. But it’s got to be worth a try, right?
Liz Bourke is a cranky person who reads books. Her blog. Her Twitter.
Regarding the scarcity problem, it’s like the difference between soloists or small groups and a massed chorus. If there’s only one or a few voices then have one out of tune will wreck the whole thing. In a massed chorus, so long as most of the singers are mostly right, anyone who’s off-key will get drowned out. Even if everyone in harmony is still better. Of course, if the tempo or rhythm is off then the mass chorus descends into a smear of noise. But no one said art was easy.
Really waiting to see how this plays out with Marvel’s Jessica Jones….
While I agree with you that there is much more focus on the portrayal of women – mainly, I think, because there are so few women that when they appear and aren’t fully fleshed-out it feels like cheating – I’d say there is some criticism of the “Strong Male Character;” it’s just usually phrased as “Male Power Fantasy,” or it’s criticism about your typical urban fantasy Anti-Hero who has to remind the audience that how he’s a Man (Harry Dresden, I’m looking at you).
I actively search for decent fantasy with female leads because, well, I prefer them. I am a guy though, and I really like Lord of the Rings, and ASOIF and used to like the Wheel of Time, but there’s lots of female characters in that latter one. There are more and more offerings coming out, normally not huge titles though, but think of Jacqueline Carry and her ilk, and you can have a lot of fun there.
I frankly don’t care if it’s just a gender swap onto what could be a male character, because that’s the ideal anyway. Like when I play Mass Effect, it’s femshep, because I prefer her voice and looking at her ass as I run around, shallow as hell, but yep.
Jessica Jones should be fun, likely because feminists probably won’t love it, an alco with a horrible backstory, who gets drunk and has meaningless sex because of her horrible self esteem issues…lol
I’m actually getting fatigued by all the expectations piled on fictional characters, male or female. Many different kinds of people populate our world. We all conform to some stereotypes associated with our roles, sex, cultures, or professions in some of our behavior.
I want to read about people with such complexity too, without people instinctively reacting to something as “too X” or “not X” enough. Let people make the art they want to make, and let the characters be who they want to be. Let people enjoy it without bringing your elaborate, precise expectations of who characters are obligated to be.
As I try to noodle with this thought experiment, I keep pulling up with the same problem. Is it worthwhile to not consider a characters sex in an assessment of them? I get not getting into a good hero or good heroine discussion and which is better, but how can you ignore a characters gender in an assessment of them. I question what a default character is, adn how it has become default. I tend to believe the default is just the product of tired repetition, and its lack of freshness, of originality argues against the default already.
Don’t we already deal with ideas of strength differently based on who is wielding it? Strength is already a relative concept.
Hm, as far as I am concerned Strong Female characters in urban fantasy _are_ usually depicted very differently from male heroes indeed and mostly in problematic and detrimental ways. In many cases a “man with breasts” would be an improvement methinks. I.e.:
Where a male protagonist has deep connections with and earns respect of people of his own gender as well as is appreciated by women, a female one tends to be a “queen bee” who is hated and envied by other women because she is cool enough to keep up with the guys, and she “rightfully” despises them in return for shallowness and a multitude of other sins. Which is largely due to the fact that where
a male protagonist can have a variety of romantical involvements, ranging from none at all through meaningless flings, sincere, but not earth-shattering relationships, doomed passions, etc. to in some cases the one great love, with whom he maybe gets together at the end of the story. Not to mention that old hoary fount of drama, a dead love of his life, which still allows for all the permutations above, while adding motivation and angst. Anyway, however it goes, the romances of the male protagonist take a very distant third place to, well, the adventure plot, the worldbuilding and his relationships with other characters (usually, but nowadays thankfully not always other men) – friendships, enmities, daddy issues, etc. Nor does it hog too much page space. Nor are all other men necessarily seen as competition for the love interest and even if they are, the assumption is that the protagonist will prevail and win her over.
whereas for a female protagonist, it seems pretty much set in stone that there should be the one true love, that he must be as kick-ass as her or more so, or she would be “settling”, that he must have ample opportunities to prove his awesomness on-screen and “take care” of her, so she has to be hurt/captured/ have a breakdown at regular intervals, that all other relationships are ultimately secondary to theirs, and the adventure plot often is as well. The other guys she surrounds herself with are there to provide romantic false starts/tension or to be “fatherly” mentors and, above all because they are not romantic competition to the heroine, which other women of similar age are perceived to be, and we can’t have that. Otherwise, the assumption is that women, other than the heroine who is speshul, are dull and useless, I guess?
So, yea, my main issue is that “strong” female protagonists as they currently exist in vast majority of urban fantasy and often elsewhere, aren’t actually allowed to be the heroes of their own story, nor to have the ranges of different personalities and experiences that the male protagonists do.
These days, so much of the reaction to a book is someone trying to apply their personal political or social standards to another person’s work of art. It’s getting to the point where I think it’s gone beyond useful criticism to posturing. People want to signal their identity credentials to others and they do so by creating unrealistic expectations of art.
The books I read should be populated by interesting characters and I don’t particularly care if some tropes are in play as a result. It’s useless to argue about a character being “too strong” or “too masculine” or even “a man with breasts.” None of those things have any objective meaning. Readers will apply their own standards and experiences in any case.
Hello all-
::waves::
Hmmmmm there is stuff to ponder here.
Isilel makes and excellent point about the partner of a given hero in a book. Why is it that the guy has to be awesome or a women would be settling? You find someone you love to be with, not someone you can use to build up your resume. Relationships are about finding how two different people can fit together.
We mentioned Kate Daniels. I actually like her books. The issue I have with her is that she can cook. Dang it, that doesn’t track. Voron was training her from the word “jump” to be a killer, a survivor. When did she have time to learn how to cook? Give her some character flaws… Oh yeah, she can’t shoot, like that is a deal breaker.
Mostly for me, I don’t really pay attention to the gender, I just enjoy the pace of reading. What annoys me is if a relationship is somehow forced into a story line just for the purpose of having one. Not every great book has to have people pairing off.
Woof™.
There’s a lot of interesting stuff here to think about, and I’ve probably been guilty of it. I am hoping as that more and more women get written about this problem will start to solve itself. Sometimes it seems like a tricky balancing act (even when I look at my own juvenile writing) – either you are making the woman too perfect and Mary Sue-ish, or you’re making her too flawed and therefore (inadvertently) making some statement about womanhood. Honestly, I don’t think it’s a trick I’ve mastered perfectly in my own (completely recreational and very occasional) writing, and I AM a woman, so you’d think I’d be able to write one ;) That said, I have enjoyed works by writers better than me that show a variety of ‘strength’ attributes.
Regarding your double standard about the way we view strength and how we are quick to call for more depth in a woman but not a man – it actually kind of reminded me of the essay about Frodo published a few days ago on Tor that basically attempted to claim that Frodo isn’t strong/active enough to be a hero…and well…not a lot of people agreed with that assessment ;)
So, “We fall into the error of really rather relentlessly applying criticism to female characters.” while, apparently, applying that same relentless criticism to the criticism. This, by a woman writer discussing the criticism done (presumably) principally by other women.
Sounds like a professor of women’s studies complaining that we study women too much.
As for my personal view, I think @5 Halien said it better than I can “I’m actually getting fatigued by all the expectations piled on fictional characters, male or female. …”
Subwoofer @9, I agree with you. If it’s an incomplete character, male or female doesn’t really matter.
Interesting read as always. Do you think this is true of all ages for female characters? The more I mull this over, the more I wonder if it is an extension of the unspoken rule that young women somehow belong to society, so that therefore all people have a right to comment on how they look, behave, dress etc. I’m wondering if the same over-application of critique extends to older strong female characters. The best example I can think of offhand is Carol from The Walking Dead (TV Series). Certainly, she is an older woman with strong, even anti-heroic qualities. Though I probably don’t pay enough attention to online conversation to know if she comes under the same level of scrutiny?
I guess I’m sort of reminded of that Le Guin story in which there is a planet that is the product of a fourteen year old boy’s imagination. The young people on the planet are all forced to fit into shallow stereotypes of what the boy wants them to be, but when the made-up people get older, the boy is no longer interested in them, and they can leave the ‘story’ and actually lead fulfilling lives and develop their own culture.
And the temptation of course is to start reflecting on my own attempts at fiction, but I tend to think that’s sort of like describing an amazing dream to people. Fun and relevant for the person doing the talking, but dull as all get out for everyone else…
Chris
“competence with violence, willingness to defy authority, and the occasional ability to make entertaining banter”
Baru Cormorant, anyone? Just finished that book and wow, talk about a steely female character whose gender isn’t ignored. I don’t think it can be argued that she’s a “man with breasts”-type. Conniving and a little lacking in empathy, yes.
For what it’s worth, my novel The Seven Exalted Orders featured a strong, independent female who was paired with a gentler male lover. I got some sharp remarks about writing such a “weak, unrealistic” man and how unsympathetic he was. Nobody complained about the woman’s character.
I hadn’t really set out to flip the gender roles, but in retrospect I can see how readers might take it that I was having the man act the way a woman usually does. Now that I’m working on a sequel, I’m trying to be true to these characters, while playing with those expectations a bit.
You know, I see this ‘scarcity’ idea a lot when this is discussed, but… is it actually true any longer? I’m not saying that male protagonists don’t vastly outnumber females, because that’s still true, but the idea that books with female protagonists are hard to find? Well, that’s not really true any longer. In fact, I hazard to suggest that you could aim to read only fantasy/SF with female protagonists from now on, and NEVER run out of reading material. I mean, there’s a LOT of it. Heaping loads of it, actually, and more and more being published every day.
So I don’t think it’s the rarity of seeing a female MC that is driving people to be so judgmental… instead, I think it’s just that everyone’s now been told they should be judging them. This highly focused scrutiny has been brought to bear, because female characters were often shallow and stereotypical in fiction in the past – they were often gender stereotypes. But, is that true now? I don’t think it is.
Maybe the best way to overcome this trend is to simply normalize female characters. She’s not shallow – that’s really just the way some people are. You don’t have to like everything about her – that’s what makes her realistic. She dated the male protag? Go her.
Essentially… just let it go, and the rest will follow. Until women accept themselves in the roles that are being portrayed, they’re going to be judgmental. So, let’s see if our real problem what these characters isn’t their flaws, but our own…
As an author who writes lots of women characters, I’ve come to the conclusion that someone, somewhere, will find fault with every single one of them. A woman I see as learning new, often frightening skills, and having the courage not to back away when danger threatens, is seen by someone else as boring, even lacking a personality.
It’s a classic case of I can’t do anything right with my women characters, so I might as well do what I want.
So I do.
Many valid comments here…
For me it doesn’t matter if a character is male or female, the important thing is, they are interesting and well-written. I think many people today look too hard for something to be offended over. If there is a female character, they always try to turn the way she is described into some kind of statement by the author: if she is weak, the author is misogynist, if she is strong, this is a feminist statement and you have no right to dislike her no matter how poorly written. Why? There are strong and weak women in RL, so it’s only natural there are strong and weak women in fiction.
I loved a statement Robin Hobb made in an Ask the Author session somewhere, sadly I cannot find it. Roughly paraphrased, she said she does not feel the duty to include an exact number of characters from each sex, race, social background etc. She just includes characters that are in the best position to tell an interesting story. And for me, her female characters are strong in a natural way, different then her male characters, but never less or more so.
Thank you for posting this. Literary criticism needs to talk a lot more about this subject, but this is a great start.
For the record, I tend not to be fond of either female or male characters who are just stereotypical action heroes. Being strong and good at fighting are valid traits, but truly interesting characters need depth, and depth often implies some (or many) flaws, weaknesses and fears. The problem arises when we only demand for female characters to have those. (See, for example, video game reviewers saying that the new Tomb Raider game was a great piece of fiction because we saw Lara Croft being afraid and traumatised… so why don’t we see male video game protagonists in that situation?)
Finally, I vote that the phrase “man with breasts” be stricken from the language. I’m a real-life woman who expresses pretty much no “traditionally female” qualities (well, I like sewing…). Does that mean that if I were written into a fictional story, I wouldn’t be realistic? Nuts to that.
@9, Subwoffer: Knowing how to cook is a survival skill. I don’t read the books, so not sure how it is presented. But humans shouldn’t live off of take-out and sandwiches alone.
Cordelia Naismith, anyone? Great strong character. Bujold in general has a balanced approach to her characters.
When I read a romance, I expect the relationship between the man and woman be the focus. But I long ago grew out of wanting that to be the only focus of the book. When it becomes the focus of the story in other genres, I get annoyed. Because life is about more than who you love or sleep with.
@@.-@ DougL
“Jessica Jones should be fun, likely because feminists probably won’t love it, an alco with a horrible backstory, who gets drunk and has meaningless sex because of her horrible self esteem issues…lol”
Just to prove that you apparently don’t understand the first thing about feminism: all the feminists at The Mary Sue and other such popculture/media outlets directed at women are incredibly excited about this series.
[Dis]honest question:
How much of the definition of “strong character” is intertwined with the “protagonists and antagonists use physical violence, or at least the threat of it, to get their way” meme that underlies almost all “heroic” fiction? Western culture — if less so than Asian and (my admittedly incomplete understanding of) African culture — has, umm, “problems” with females who step outside of certain cultural imperatives, even when depicting other cultures. A corollary thread is that we tend to think less of the heroism of even male protagonists who place themselves in moral or intellectual danger than we do of the gun/sword/knife/fist-totin’ Man of Action.
And that’s how we end up with Superman fighting General Zod, destroying multiple cities, and nobody caring about the collateral damage… which is really bad, unbelievable fiction.
@22.
To that I would contrast a character like Mara of the Acoma, in the Empire series.
She has little physical prowess, but rather gets her way through intelligence, planning, adaptability, and alliances.
And she is emphatically a strong lead character, who happens to be female. But I don’t think her plotline would have been possible with a male lead, because it also involves concepts of motherhood, family, isolation and legacies.
Men and women definitely view their legacies differently in our world. And that has a definite effect on their writing if it crosses generations.
@DougL: Where in the world did you get the idea that feminists wouldn’t like a character who gets to screw up and goof off yet also be heroic, instead of picking off the usual menu (angsty angel, bad woman who gets her comeuppance, prize for the hero, or stage dressing)?
It was an interesting experience for me to read Ann Leckie’s Ancillary books. The society she describes does not make clear gender distinctions. All characters are called ‘she,’ and referred to by subordinates as ‘sir.’ With only a few exceptions, we never get any clue of the gender of any of the characters. And I don’t remember Leckie ever identifying the gender of the main character, Breq, who had been used as an ancillary, or what amounted to computer controlled slave, or a human robot. Who happens to be one of the most admirable characters I have ever encountered in fiction. Brave, headstrong, clever, and passionately concerned with the rights of the underdog. Was Breq a strong female character? Or a strong male character? In the end, it really didn’t matter. She was a strong character.
“Thou dost protest too much” is a common enough problem of literature these days. Hell, every form of media has it’s boogeyman, predominantly focused on ‘proper representation’ and ‘shying away from -improper- forms of X issue.’ But as far as double standards go, well, I can’t help but casually slide my glance down the shelf, toward the romance section.
You know. The one universally ignored, yet earning more than Sci-Fi and Fantasy combined. Three times over. But that I suppose that would be rather mean-spirited to point that thing out, wouldn’t it?
Generalizations aside, I think this is the problem with current critics – they’re not looking at the whole picture, and I don’t think they want to look at the whole picture because ‘time’ and ‘effort.’ They’re so focused at the microscopic level of ‘this character’s breasts are too large for this sort of thing!’ or ‘someone clearly could never understand the problems of Y demographic, so why are they writing that sort of character?’ that they’re missing the larger scope of the work. I’m halfway surprised that this brigade of critics hasn’t gone after the classics for supposed flaws.
That ‘Too much X’ as I’ve seen it has come from the commentators who use terminology like ‘Problematic’ and a preponderance of throwing out ‘-ism’ words like Halloween candy. And don’t get me wrong. Men and women do this. A lot. (I tend to see more women doing it, but could that be women’s studies, could that be something else, I dunno.) It’s the issue with these identity politics. Everything is some form of ist or ism so that it can be torn down, broken apart, and left bleeding on the sidelines. Part of me wonders if it isn’t a side-effect of postmodernism – we got so used to deconstruction that any attempt at creation is stifled by the very fact that creators inherently -know- their work will be derided and degraded through ‘academic’ and internet scrutiny.
Tell you what – I would like to write a female character who’s all bad-ass and trained and people respect her and she’s earned a position among her peers, but I want her one fatal flaw to be that she’s in love with someone who betrayed her – and that she’s sworn herself to love only that person.
According to the critique brigade, you can’t have that. Why? Because it’s one of those isms. Or ists. Or it’s problematic. Or it hurt someone’s feelings. Or it represents toxic this or that. Or… you just can’t tell these days. My personal suggestion would be to tell these critics to go slog a few rounds of whiskey or their poison of choice and relax. The world’s not going to end because you hung up your fedora and turtle-shell glasses, and frankly, it’ll probably open up some conversations without some damn nanny policing every little bit of wordplay used.
Seriously.
Not the point of this post, but I’m making it here because it seems related to me. We want to show people in their fullness of being people.
Robin Hobb –often applauded for showing women doing lots of roles. I’m reading the “Assassin” series for the first time. Just read the prologue of Royal Assassin. Fitz is thinking about his early life. Says “There were no women who offered me the special tenderness said to be the provinces of women. None save Molly.”
That’s discounting: Hob (weapon’s teacher), the cooks – who always left out food for the boys & set aside bones for his dog, the seamstress, and later Lady Patience.
How about authors stop ignoring all the women in the story except “women of the guard”, or stop discounting that they exist? How about more speaking parts be given to female 2&3rd level characters.
He ran with the street children, but only Molly was female? Molly never had any female friends?
@26: I’ve read a number of romance books. Ones written in the 1970s, 80s, 90s, and today. There has been a change in the way they are written as well. The most common theme of the older ones I read were the 18-22 year old virgin falling for and marrying the 30-45 year old womanizer. That’s out. I won’t say no one writes it anymore – but it is a rare book to find anymore.
More romances are showing people as equals. Both people have goals beyond “finding the right one.”
Are tropes still being use? Yes. But you can say that with any genre.
One couple that I like (not sure how it fits in here) is Vin and Eland from Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn trilogy. I especially like the part in the middle book where they both confess to Sazed, (entirely independently of each other I might add), about how they worry that they aren’t good enough for each other. Vin worries that Elend needs/deserves someone who was raised to court politic unlike her who was a street urchin for most of her life, and Elend worries that he is essentially a “normal” who is only for the first time in his life trying to stand up to his ideals whereas Vin both is the winner of that world’s superpower lottery, but is considered the heir to to the greatest hero of their time. A big part of their romance is accepting they don’t have to be like each other to be worthy of each other’s love.
I think I know which segments of society are predominantly preoccupied with how female characters are being presented in books, and it isn’t my buddy Bill and I.
I’m with you in that I think a definition of a “strong” character can be tightened up, and it really should have little to do with gender. I’ve sought out and enjoyed a number of books lately with female protagonists. I find well written female characters will, by default, refresh what have become some tired genres for me, simply because they offer a different viewpoint than the predominantly-male series I’ve read before.
And that’s what makes it incredibly easy to tell if a female character is strong: if it just sinks back into the sludge of tropes and well-tread arcs I’ve seen before, it doesn’t pass my sniff test.
Great post and thoughtful comments.
Alan Brown’s comments about Ann Leckie’s Ancillary books underscores the possibility of viewing stories on the basis of complex humans rather than gender roles. Society’s attitudes toward women and their roles are changing, and we are slowly creeping toward more open mindedness but not without opposition. When we encounter women who share qualities we typically associate with men, our reactions are often diverse and vocal.
We definitely aren’t at the place where male and female characters in fiction are critiqued equally. I like to imagine that someday this will change. But, for now, I agree that female characters are judged more harshly than men, and we need writers like Liz Bourke to point this out.
Growing up I hated to see a female characters stand by crying or screaming, waiting for a man to save her or watching helplessly as she was being rescued. In my mind, I wouldn’t have done that. I would have helped or at the very least called 911. I’m delighted that writers are creating complex female characters who can break the stereotypes.
I look for complex human characters rather than “strong” characters. I also think it’s productive to critique novels, comics, movies, and other story media. Writers sometimes don’t see their biases until someone points them out, and consumers may not notice the cultural biases they unknowingly accept. As a woman, I long for complex and diverse female characters in stories, women who seem real.
I agree with Jaws observations about the consequences of violence and collateral damage. The collateral damage of story violence is often unexamined and invisible. Which isn’t surprising, since violence is woven into the fabric of our society.
For what it’s worth, I’ve been criticizing heroes for shallow strength for years. Not that I don’t get a lot of blank looks in response, but still….
The way the trope twists for male heroes is interesting. Max Rockatansky, for example, is basically defined by being superficially shallow. He’s actually a stone softy, and it’s his downfall and redemption.
In fact, I’d go so far as to say that’s really the essence of the hardboiled hero as Chandler & Hammett defined him, and as proficient exponents of that thread (like Walter Mosely, John D. McDonald, & others) carried it forward.
But most readers/viewers don’t give a crap about that, so that level of detail doesn’t usually make it to the copies or the poor adaptations. Still, it’s nice when it does.
I think we as people, male and female, are having a hard time figuring out who and what we are and how strong we need to be. Do we really need for every superhero, every kickass protagonist to kiss so much arse? Where are the strong characters that solve things without their fists and feet? Without weapons? This is something we are beginning to struggle with as people and as intelligent beings so it is not surprising it plays out in the genres when it comes to male and female characters. Somewhere along the line we have lost something and it may be our definitions of male and female that transcend the basic physiology and biology of male and female.
Are female protagonists acting too much like men and is there any longer a line between male and female? Does it all have to be fists and feet and weapons? Where is the nurturing side that was supposed to be such an integral part of females?
In a show filled with arse kicking superheroes of the female type, Canary, Black Canary, Nyssa, etc., it is the character of Felicity Smoke that I find strongest and she is all female. No, she can’t fight in the conventional weapon and kickass sense, but she is strong and she does lead even if it is behind the computer. She takes on all of the men and holds them to a higher standard of behavior and isn’t that what it used to mean to be female, to inspire men to be better? If everyone is fighting, where is the better? I’d also call Dr. Caitlin Snow a strong female protagonist and she doesn’t get out there and fight with the enemy either.
While we are redefining what a strong woman is, maybe that is what we should be going for and not just some muscle-bound female in a hot costume out to bring war to the bad guys, not that I have anything against Amazons. Wonder Woman has always been my favorite Amazon.
Killashandra Ree, the Crystal Singer [Anne McCaffrey]
Cassie Zukov [Keith RA DeCandido]
Maxine Kiss [Marjorie M Liu]
Heidi
Alice
George [Famous Five]
Critiquing the gender roles in art is important, but I think it would be much more constructive to praise the good ones than filling out a bingo card of flaws. Nobody is perfect, and fictional characters shouldn’t be either (or else we get a Mary Sue, which is the centre of the bingo card). There is nothing wrong with having any given type of character, as an equivalent probably exists somewhere in the real world, and her presence doesn’t mean the author necessarily agrees with her views. Rather than the individual characters, we should analyse the tendencies: stories don’t exist in a vacuum, but if the problem is that one type of character is overrepresented, it’s not the fault of that particular author. It’s better to criticize the trite representation of “strong” female characters than one particular book or movie for its unoriginal use of the character. Good ones however should be praised.
@26, Jackal it was a pure pleasure for me to read your comment. I think disecting every word in a story looking for something that can be considered offensive is a favourite pastime of many modern readers and I personally do not see the joy of it.
Speaking of which, the very next comment demonstrates this. Of course Fitz, telling the story, will focus on his love interest. Later in the book it becomes clear he is an unreliable narator, prone to dramatics and self-pity. Of course he will over-dramatize and say Molly was the only woman that provided him any attention. If you decide to take comments out of context you can find all kinds of -isms in every single story.
I’m just really wondering how and most importantly why in the world is this subject really something to get all bothered about?
Thank you for this post.
Comment 37 and response at 40 unpublished–let’s not feed the trolls.
Hang on now, cooking is not a survival skill, hunting is a survival skill. Take meat, put on stick burn with flame. Kabob.Ce’Nedra is one female character that burned everything and was still awesome. Aunt Pol was a master cook, but she had thousands of years to figure that out. When I met my wife there were tumbleweeds in her fridge. She was a master one finger cook, she knew every take out joint within 10km and had their numbers on speed dial. My wife is still perfect, cooking was something that was not developed at that time.
For Kate, her every waking moment was devoted to various forms of combat, survival, tracking and studying many languages and texts on magic. Baking a pie from scratch doesn’t mesh with that. But that is just me.
The world building aspect of the story is amazing, the way magic and tech work and function, shapeshifters and everything. It was done well. Definitely worth a read.
For other stories, I can’t say. I have to look at them on an individual basis and it doesn’t matter if the lead is male or female, if the story is poorly written, move on.
Woof™.
it’s funny how ‘strong female characters’ = females playing males, or females that achieve dominance by violence. Anjelina Jolie always pops to mind first when I hear the term. All those Lara Croft, Black Widow, Furiosa, Katniss and so on strong female characters are not much more than a guys fantasy, and it’s funny how no one remembers Hilary Swank when talking about SFC. Every single role that actress played was of a strong female, just she didn’t shot guns and bows, or snap guys’ necks. But, the way she plays her characters make them look strong, determined, independent, much like Jodie Foster picked her roles before but no one remembers their SFC.
That just points out another thing. No one cares much about REAL SFC, just about the spandexed ones
I am gonna bring up Vin from Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson again, while it’s true that she kicks ass what makes her work as a character is her vulnerability. She grew up street urchin and has a hard time believing anyone will ever love her. That’s what makes watching her slowly open up over the course of the series as she friendship and love so beautiful.